Wikipedia-l March 2005

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

113 participants
144 discussions

Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia
by Boris Lohnzweiger 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Hi Wouter ! First of all, let me point out that I fully agree that there is no sense in including Saterlandic Frisian articles in the existing West Frisian Wikipedia. The language (along with North Frisian and its dialects) is just too distinct for that. I think Mark got it right - even though living in Arizona! - when he was writing about three Frisian languages. One might add that - as far as I know - Saterlandic is the only surving dialect of the East Frisian language which formerly covered basically the whole region of East Frisia (including the East Frisian islands). By the way, in Germany only the terms "Saterländisch" or "Saterfriesisch" are used for the language while "Ostfriesisch" nowadays refers to the regional variant of Lox Saxon (Plattdeutsch) spoken in East Frisia. When talking about the Frisian language spoken in the north of the Netherlands Germans generally use the term "Westfriesisch" in order not to confuse it with Frisian spoken in Germany. However the Dutch simply call it "Fries" or "Frysk" and many might not be aware of the variants spoken in Germany because they have relatively few speakers compared to West Frisian. Having said all that, here's my main point. I value your enthusiasm and I am in favour any appropriate means for preserving and promoting endangered minority languages (which are a precious cultural heritage) such as Saterlandic Frisian. However, I think it's just impossible to create a useful online encyclopedia depending on volunteer editors out of a community of barely 2000 native speakers. Please think about it. From looking at your name, I guess you are not a native speaker, are you? Please don't get me wrong. Of course, you can set up a Saterlandic wikipedia technically. But once it is installed would it ever have the slightest chance of becoming a useful, reliable source of information? Could it ever really flourish? If so, great! But given the small number of Saterlandic speakers I really doubt that. And please remember that even for those, say, 1.800 people the language they read and write in is German. How many editors does a wikipedia need to work (even if only at a very modest level)? E. g. the Dutch wikipedia (with c. 55,000 articles) currently has 9,333 registered editors, out of a language community of maybe 23 million. That equals a ratio of 0.04 % editors - and even if that number might still grow in the future, most wikipedia languages probably won't even reach that percentage. Now try to break that down for Saterlandic! In my opinion the only way for a wikipedia to become a success is to bring together a large number of people to cooperate. As far as Saterlandic is concerned, that is just not possible. That is a pity, of course. But it's the truth. If you think I am too pessimistic please have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_ranking_February_2005, ranks 86 through 161. It's not that those wikipedias have just been established recently. Matter of fact, most of them have existed for quite some time now. Some of them have been around for a couple of years or more. And all of them have been them have been set up with the best of intentions by committed people just like you. And many of those languages have millions of speakers. But nevertheless, those wikipedias just aren't running. I always get kind of sad when I look at them. I surely wouldn't like to see a Saterlandic edition ending up like that. Just some thoughts that crossed my mind Boris wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org schrieb am 04.03.05 20:43:28: I would like to apply for a Wikipedia in Saterlandic (East) Frisian. Further details can be read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterlandic_Frisian_language and soon at the requests page. Thanks in advance, Caesarion _________________________________________________________________ Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/ _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l __________________________________________________________ Mit WEB.DE FreePhone mit hoechster Qualitaet ab 0 Ct./Min. weltweit telefonieren! http://freephone.web.de/?mc=021201

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia + thoughts on small language wikipedias in general
by Boris Lohnzweiger 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Hi Wouter ! Thank you for taking the time to consider my arguments and for your comprehensive response. I agree with most of what you are writing and I am well aware that your request for Saterlandic is far more mature then many other pending Wikipedia language requests. You're right, we might have slightly different ideas on what Wikipedia is all about. Let me briefly explain what it is to me. You wrote: > Its main goal is, of course, providing freely editable and downloadable > information. A second aim is to create encyclopaedias in as many languages > as possible. I certainly agree with you there. And so does Wikipedia's claim "The Free Encyclopia". But what is an encyclopia supposed to be? Me, I think any encyclopedia - printed or online - should serve as a _comprehensive_and_reliable_ source of information. Otherwhise it's useless. Imagine you go about looking up something in a printed encyclopedia only to find out it lacks some article it definetly ought to contain. I'd probably throw that book into the nearest trash can. Now how many articles does an encyclopedia need to be useful for the reader? I suppose the world's most renowned encyclopedias all contain 100,000+ articles. More compact versions do exist, but I seriously doubt that any book with less than 10,000 articles could ever provide a useful amount of information from all fields of knowledge. Moreover, I guess it could not even be called an encyclopedia in that case. My point is that when we set up a new language edition of Wikipedia, it should at least have a chance to became a "real encyclopia" one day. But then again, other people might have different ! ideas of what an encyclopedia is supposed to be. That's perfectly fine. As you might have noticed already my concerns are not so much about your Saterlandic proposal in particular but rather about wikipedias for lesser used languages and their pros and cons in general. You correctly emphasize - and so did Mark - that the number of speakers is not the only and maybe not even the key factor in a Wikipedia's success or failure. If that was the case, Bengali with more than 100 million native speakers would be a huge thing, which obviously isn't so. No, it's far more complex than that (think about literacy, social prestige of the language, national/regional identity, literary tradition as opposed to mere oral usage, internet access, and so forth). Still I think you just need minimum number of people with knowledge in various fields of knowledge to asure quality as well as quantity. Printed encyclopedias usually are the work of hundreds of editors. Paid, professional, full-time editors, nota bene! Can we really expect to succeed with far _fewer_ editors when they contribute on a volunteer basis in their short free time? Boris ______________________________________________________________ Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS! Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193

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downtime status report
by Kate Turner 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

hello, downtime during the last ~2 hours (13-15 UTC) was caused by a power strip in the colo blowing. switch/router and some machines were down, but the database is unaffected. the site is now mostly up but may be unreliable / slow while we finish working on it. we're currently discussing options WRT better management & redundancy to prevent this happening again in the future... thanks, kate. (i should point out that this problem was entirely our fault, not the colo's, and they were very helpful in bringing the site back online. please follow up technical queries to wikitech-l rather than wikipedia-l).

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alphabetical order
by James R. Johnson 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Hey, Is there any way to alter the alphabetical order used to sort lists of articles? In the OE wiki, the letter æ (a and e together) should be alphabetized after a, so that áetan, ániman, æfter show up in that order, and ð and þ are arranged after d and t, respectively. There are also accented vowels that should show up in their unaccented versions as well, so that and, ániman, and ánlíepig are all under the letter A. James

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Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia
by Stephen Forrest 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

Forwarded to Wikipedia-l as requested by the author, who mistakenly sent it only to me... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog(a)hotmail.com> Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 00:00:13 +0100 Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia To: stephen.forrest(a)gmail.com >I believe you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterland_Frisian_language. > >For the purposes of ISO 639 codes, Saterland Frisian is regarded as a >dialect of Frisian. Can you provide a rationale for why working >within the Frisian Wikipedia is not tenable? > >I seem to recall reading that there were different spelling >conventions for the Frisian spoken in Germany and that spoken in the >Netherlands. I have no idea how significant these differences are. > >Steve >_______________________________________________ >Wikipedia-l mailing list >Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l You were right: I used the wrong link. Just a matter of mental absence ;). What is a dialect? There is a seperate Wiki for Aromanian, though it can easily be classified as a Romanian dialect. There are Limburgish, Low Saxon and Alemannic Wikis, though German and Dutch would do well for all three of them. Some tend to classify Czech, Slowakian and even Polish as one language, but no-one question the legitimity of the seperate wikis. According to many scolars, West Lauwer Frisian and Saterland Frisian are dialects of the Frisian language, along with North Frisian. Some do, however, consider it a separate language. Let me point out the differences and similarities. Westlauwer Frisian has, like Hollandic Dutch, only two genders: gendered and neuter (de man, de frou, it ding). Saterlandic has three (di Mon, ju Fauene, dät Diert). Westlauwer Frisian lost, again along with Dutch, its cases, while Saterlandic preserved its dative and accusative cases. Westlauwer Frisian has a complex system of diphthong which are the consequences of an elaborate breaking process during the early Modern Age; this process has left Saterlandic totally untouched; instead it developed other mutation(ljibbe - lieuwje; swiet - swäit; leaf - ljoof). As a result, Westlauwer Frisians and Saterland Frisians cannot understand each other, unless they studied the other language. Another important difference is in the vocabulary: Westlauwer Frisian draws on Dutch, Saterland Frisian on German. Finally, Standard Westlauwer Frisian has no official or prescriptive status in the Saterland: If Frisian is used at all officially (which happens increasingly), Saterfrisian is used. Maybe I will point this out with some comparative samples in the article on Saterlandic. Wouter _________________________________________________________________ Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/

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Lists to edit online
by Sabine Cretella 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

Hi, before I upload words to wiktionary I normally create tables with the terms and then with mailmerge I create the pages to upload. In this way it is quite easy to create glossaries together with wiktionary contents and we have at least a double use. Now creating the texts of Wikijunior in Italian (to have it then translated by one of my pupils into German) I created a short list of the big cats in English/German/Italian - Gerard already passed me the terms in Dutch. Now what would be really great is to edit this list online - so that many people could contribute. Then have the possibility to export into csv-format (with utf-8 coding). Is there a software around that already does that? I could install it on my server for now - and of course any wikipedia project could use the contents as license would always be GNU FDL. It would be the fastest way to create contents... can you help me with this? Thank you for any hint! Ciao, Sabine -- Sabine Cretella s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it Meetingplace for translators http://www.wesolveitnet.com ***** Vuoi la parola del giorno nella tua casella di posta? Invia un'e-mail vuota a: laparoladelgiorno-subscribe(a)yahoogroups.com

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Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia
by Wouter Steenbeek 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

I would like to apply for a Wikipedia in Saterlandic (East) Frisian. Further details can be read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterlandic_Frisian_language and soon at the requests page. Thanks in advance, Caesarion _________________________________________________________________ Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/

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Orphan Works (copyright)
by Christiaan Briggs 05 Mar '05

05 Mar '05

A website I'm sure you will all be interested in: http://www.orphanworks.org/ Pass it on, BEFORE the 25th of March! —Christiaan

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Orphan Works (copyright)
by Christiaan Briggs 05 Mar '05

05 Mar '05

A website I'm sure you will all be interested in: http://www.orphanworks.org/ Pass it on, BEFORE the 25th of March! —Christiaan

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Concerning NYPL, again
by Magnus Manske 05 Mar '05

05 Mar '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Can we use images from http://digitalgallery.nypl.org which are clearly im the PD by age, e.g., from the American Civil War? Magnus -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCKdpzCZKBJbEFcz0RAsA2AJ4mbbqNFHbDt97l1YMB3F14zUn9UgCfehx+ cFMkE4dKILLVdXkrwMEsRys= =ZZq2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Wikipedia-l March 2005